


Heathcliff, I can't breathe

by TheHeightsThatWuthered (JosieRuby1)



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Death, Drug Abuse, Drugs, F/M, Grave Digger, Grieving, Modern AU, acid trip, high
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 18:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14920442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JosieRuby1/pseuds/TheHeightsThatWuthered
Summary: Taking a scene from the book and turned it into a Modern AU. Why would Heathcliff dig up Cathy's grave if this was happening in the 1980s rather than the 1790s? Because Cathy's ghost told him to.





	Heathcliff, I can't breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a parody me and @kirakiralina have but then I figured it works as an AU on its own and should be shared.

Drugs were easy enough to get your hands on assuming you knew how. Heathcliff knew. He was in his early 20s, but he already knew the ins and outs of various forms of drugs. He knew which ones would get him out of his head, he knew which ones would make him forget and most importantly he knew would once would bring Cathy back to him. He didn’t knew how he was still breathing, how he was still walking around, how his heart was still beating. How was it a human being could continue to live when his soul had been taken and sucked into the grave? Heathcliff didn’t understand but he knew he wasn’t a whole person anymore and he knew he would give anything to bring his soul, his life, his everything back to him.

Acid. LSD. That was the answer. Heathcliff had used it a few times before and had he not been an atheist he would’ve called it a religious experience. He had floated high high high and he had seen things that his brain could never comprehend or even properly remember. It had taken him to another plain and he had died on it. A death that made him not fear dying in the real world. Not that he ever really had, many many times he thought that death would be better than a life without Cathy in it. But he wasn’t ready to die yet, he still had revenge to enact.

Right now, what he was ready for was to see her again. He placed the drug under his tongue, it’s papery substance beginning to dissolve under there. He had heard that you could swallow it but the experience came quicker if you were to let it dissolve by itself. Time was the problem with the likes of acid, it took its sweet time. Sometimes it felt like house passed before anything felt different. acid, it took its sweet time. Sometimes it felt like hours passed before anything ever felt different. Heathcliff sat in Cathy's bedroom in the heights. It was still the image of what it had been when she had left to marry Edgar. It was a mess of song lyrics, half painted walls, blu-tacked to the walls were concert tickets, festival tickets and a lot of photos of the pair of them. Some other people made it into some of them, there was baby Hareton, there was Nelly in the background, and there were more than Heathcliff could bare of Edgar. But for the most part it was the two of them because deep down after all of it, Cathy had known that the pair of them were one, that they had needed to be together, that they belonged together.

It started slow, Heathcliff watched as the room began to move. It wasn't much at first, but the lyrics written on the wall began to dance in front of him. Words like love and hate and anarchy were flying out at him taking him back to the festival they had snuck into and taken pot for the first time at. They had been only 14 and they had felt like they had the entire world at their fingertips. How quickly the world had flown away from them. How quickly it had all gone and left them alone and broken on the cold, hard, ground. The words continued to fly towards him, but Heathcliff wasn’t watching them anymore, he turned to the window.

The window was ajar, it needed to be, he couldn't have his love trapped outside by something as insignificant as glass. He could see, see there in the distance, there was a glow on the moors. There was a glow on the moors and it was getting close to the Heights. It was coming for him. She was coming for him. She was coming back to him. This was her home. Not the Heights, not the building, but him. He was her home and she was coming home now.

"Heathcliff, let me in,"

The voice came from beside the window and suddenly in front of Heathcliff was the hazy face of his one true love. The face of the only person in the world he cared anything about. He yanked the window so hard that it almost broke in his hand and reached his free hand forwards, trying to touch, trying to hold his Cathy, his world. But there was nothing there to touch. Cathy's figure floated into the room and she was so real.

"Cathy," His voice was barely more than a breath.

"Heathcliff, my life, my soul," Cathy replied. "They have buried me. Heathcliff why have they buried me. I'm not dead, Heathcliff I can't breathe. I can't breathe. There's earth all around me. Earth in my mouth and up my nose. I can't breathe like this. I'm not dead, Heathcliff but this will kill me. Bring me back. Heathcliff, bring me out of the grave. Heathcliff, bring me back. Come back to me once again. You would always come back to me. Do it again now, my love, my everything."

Heathcliff was on his feet before Cathy had even finished talking. He didn't take his eyes off her once, not trusting her not to disappear if he did even for a second. He pulled on his shoes with difficulty since he was looking at the figure on the bed rather than at what he was doing. And then he searched the room. He needed something, anything he could use for digging, anything that he could use to bring Cathy back to him.

Then he was moving round the house looking over his shoulder every so often to make sure Cathy was still with him. She always was and every so often she was pressing him to hurry up. She continued with her horror story about how she had been buried alive and she needed him to get her out before she really did die, and Heathcliff just moved faster, trying to find something that he could use. Anything. He just needed to break the earth to get her out.

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, he moved Hareton out the way with a gentle hand. He didn't think of it, he just needed the thing that was in his way out of the way, and went through to the living room. Yes. There were a number of weapons here. Guns, and swords and some strange creation of Hindley's that was both at the same time. That was the one Heathcliff grabbed and a moment later he was out of the house.

It was the dead of night and the moors were cold, but Heathcliff didn't feel it. At this point Cathy was in front of him, she was leading him to her grave. Heathcliff kept the Gun-Sword in one hand and ran as fast as he could manage. He knew the moors too well to trip or fall as he was running and he continued, faster and faster. His breath left him, but he didn't dare stop, he didn't stop until Cathy stopped.

She skidded to a stop at the edge of a graveyard. There sat a small stone gravestone that read Catherine Earnshaw: Beloved Wife and Mother. Heathcliff didn't think it was a fair description of her, she was not beloved by Edgar and that child she was only truly beloved by him. He shot the stone before doing anything else. The sound pierced the silence of the night but there was no one around to hear it.

"Hurry!" Cathy insisted and then she disappeared.

Heathcliff let out a noise like a pained animal and used the sword end of the weapon to tug at the ground and try and force it up. Cathy was down there, his Cathy, his beautiful Cathy, his world, his life, his soul, his everything and it was his job to bring her back, to stop her from dying down there. The weapon was of no use and Heathcliff ended up throwing it to the side and working with his bare hands. He was tough from a life of working the farm and he didn't care that his nails ripped or that his arms ached. None of it matter, all that matter was that within this earth was his darling.

His hand hit wood and he knew he was there. He was about to bring her out. He was able to bring her back. He clawed and scratched and dug at the wood and tried to get it to move. It was stronger than him and he didn't know how to bring it out. In the end it budged, and he realised it lifted up. He did so, lifting it right up and out of the grave, he tossed it to the side and then he saw her.

Cathy was as perfect as ever. Her face seemed to be shrouded in light when he looked down at it. Bright, dark eyes stared up at him, eyes he could lose himself in for the rest of his life and never want to be found again. There was something akin to a smile on her face, an expression reserved for him and he knew he had done it. He had gotten here in time. His Cathy, his darling, his life, his world, was able to come out and come back to him. She was able to breathe. He reached a hand down to her face and stroked her soft, cool cheek.

"My darling, I'm here," He said to her. "You're free now. You can breathe, you can live. You don't have to swallow the earth anymore. You just need to get up, then we can go home. We'll go home my darling."

He ran his hand down over her lips willing her to press a kiss onto them but nothing came. She didn't move, she didn't speak, she didn't even blink. "Cathy, my love, you told me to come for you, I'm here. Come back to me like I did you. Come back to me. You know, you know we belong together. We are the same soul, the same person. One can't live with the other not here. Come home with me, Cathy, come back to Wuthering Heights, come to the moors."

"You're too late," It was Cathy's voice but it was Cathy's voice with the anger and frustration and desperation it had held in their last conversation before she had been buried. It was full of betrayal and hatred. "You let me die."

Heathcliff's arm instinctively moved away from her as her body distorted in front of him. Her beautiful, pale, perfect face turned into a ghastly image of sunken cheeks, and rotting skin. She became deathly thin and bones appeared where skin was no longer. She was a decaying body and nothing more. He scrambled away from the grave, shaking his head quickly and muttering ‘no’ over and over again.

The body followed him though, clambering with difficulty out of the grave and in the end just perching with its arms on the edge of it and its head turned towards him. Despite the lack of lips, the expression of anger was clear. “You let me die.” It spat at him, Cathy’s voice still clear from it. “You claim I am your life, you claim I am your everything but you left me time and time again. All you did was leave me, Heathcliff. You left me to die. You’re the reason I’m DEAD. You have killed me. You murdered me.”

Tears were wracking Heathcliff’s body by this point and he was shaking.

“You can cry,” The body continued its attack. “You can still cry and laugh and speak while I remain here, rotting in this grave, rotting because you didn’t save me.”

Heathcliff’s head shot up then, glaring right back at the body. “Laugh?” He repeated, bitterness dripping from his voice. “You think I will ever be able to laugh again? You think I will be happy again? You think I will be anything again with you in there? They may as well place that coffin lid over me until I am dead alongside you. I have no life without you.”

“Then join me,” the body said. “Join me. Heathcliff, you know we belong together, we should always be together. You let me die and now it’s your turn. Join me.”

Heathcliff was still for a moment before crawling his way back towards the grave and the hole he had made. He reached forward again, his hand reaching for Cathy’s cheek and feeling nothing but bone.

“You not my Cathy now,” He said softly.

“I am all that’s left of her,” the body replied.

“I want the Cathy that brought me here. You’re not my Cathy,” Heathcliff insisted.

“She’s gone. She’s not real. She’s me. I’m her. I am all that’s left since you killed me. Join me” The body said.

Heathcliff looked around silently, feeling Cathy's, no, feeling the body watching him the whole time. He got to his feet when he found what he was looking for. Hindley's gun-sword. He wasn't sure Hindley had ever even used it, or at least only for shooting walls and maybe the odd animal. It was a wonderful piece of weaponry and it was perfect for him to kill himself with. How ironic or rather perfectly fitting that it would be Hindley's weapon that would kill him when Hindley had been the one to keep Cathy from him in the first place. Still, Hindley would have no power over them in death. he would not allow it.

Heathcliff cocked the gun and pointed it towards himself. His finger shook against the trigger though he had no fear of what he was doing. He pulled it and felt his hand fly back from the pressure of it, he heard the loud pop of the bullet leaving it but he didn't feel it. He was still there. He was still continuing to breath and live. This wasn't right, this wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be with Cathy. He pulled the trigger again and again. Each time came with the pullback and the noise but no pain, no sweet release of death. Nothing. Was this gun faulty, did Hindley do something to it? Was Hindley really going to prevent them from being together even in death.

Heathcliff pulled the trigger yet again and felt himself fall back. No. There was no blood, no pain, no death. It still hadn't worked. He couldn't understand why it wasn't working. He couldn't understand why he wasn't dead yet. He screamed and pulled it one final time. It only held six bullets, this was the last chance. And still nothing. He threw it down with a scream of frustration and pain and devastation. He was pulling at his hair and screaming up at the sky.

"Are you there? Do you exist? If you do, kill me now. Kill me right this second. Give me the peace of death. Give me her back. GIVE ME HER. I am nothing without her. Give me her back, give her back to me. Send me to her. WHY ARE YOU PREVENTING THIS?"

He didn't know if he was shouting at the dead Hindley or at the god he had never believed it but whichever one it was he was furious. He needed this to stop. He needed to join his Cathy. He needed her. He turned back to the grave and Cathy was once again lying in it, once again the image of perfect with soft cheeks and bright dark eyes, once again his Cathy. He smiled, though they were no mirth behind it and he moved over to it again. He forgot the gun, forgot his cries and just climbed into the grave. He lay next to his Cathy and went back to stroking her hair, and smoothing her face. He kissed her cheek, then moved around slowly and kissed her on the lips.

"If they won't take me, my darling, I will just lie here until death comes for me." He promised and before long he was asleep right there with her.

Death never came for him though and several hours later he woke to the rising of the sun and the reality of the night before.


End file.
